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Bronx Surrogate Judge, Facing Discipline, Defends Himself

The complicated arrangement of letters and numbers in the myriad rules and protocols governing his court’s procedure rolled off Judge Lee L. Holzman’s tongue as easily as the alphabet as he testified on Tuesday.

He referred casually to rules — like Section 1418 of the S.C.P.A., a reference to the Surrogate’s Court Procedure Act — that, he insisted in a Manhattan courtroom, he had long strongly enforced in his court.

Judge Holzman explained the specific guidelines about what fees lawyers can collect when they administer an estate and when they can collect them. Veering from those procedures, he testified, would require a thorough explanation.

And so it was with indignation, he said, that he met the news that rules were being broken right under his gavel.

“I was shocked,” Judge Holzman said, referring to his reaction when he learned that Esther Rodriguez, the former Bronx public administrator, and her former counsel, Michael Lippman, had allegedly deviated from that protocol.

Judge Holzman, the Bronx surrogate since 1988, is in the midst of a disciplinary hearing in which he is charged with allowing his staff to run amok and to take fees that were excessive and unearned from estates that it was handling. Judge Holzman could lose his job as a result of the hearing.

The hearing provides a rare look at such a proceeding in New York State. Normally, they are closed, but Judge Holzman waived his right to confidentiality. This is just the 11th time in the state that a judge has waived confidentiality in more than 750 formal disciplinary proceedings spanning three and a half decades, said Robert H. Tembeckjian, the administrator of the State Commission on Judicial Conduct, which is prosecuting the case.

Photo

Judge Lee Holzman, left, with his lawyer, David Godosky, before a disciplinary hearing on his conduct as the Bronx surrogate. The hearing is open, which is rare for such proceedings.Credit
Michael Appleton for The New York Times

The hearing is being held before Felice Shea, a retired State Supreme Court justice, who will advise to the commission whether the charges against Judge Holzman have been proven. If they have, the commission then makes the decision on Judge Holzman’s fate; its options range from admonition to removal.

Judge Holzman, who as surrogate oversees proceedings for wills and the settling of estates of people who die without wills, portrayed himself as the victim of dishonest employees.

He said he first had an inkling of wrongdoing in 2004, when he noticed that a man whom Ms. Rodriguez had hired to clean out the properties of deceased people was receiving more money than usual. Judge Holzman later learned that the city was investigating the man, John Rivera, and told Ms. Rodriguez to stop using him, he said. As the public administrator, Ms. Rodriguez was to oversee the administration of estates of people who died without wills, including paying legal fees for that work.

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Judge Holzman said he later learned that Ms. Rodriguez was still using Mr. Rivera, who, unbeknown to the judge, was her boyfriend.

“At that point, I had absolutely zero confidence in Esther Rodriguez,” Judge Holzman testified, adding that he gave her an ultimatum in January 2006. “I said, ‘You have two choices. You can resign or I’m going to fire you,’ and she gave me a letter of resignation.”

It was only after Ms. Rodriguez — who, along with Mr. Rivera, faces criminal charges — resigned, Judge Holzman said, that he learned of what the commission has said were improper billing practices by Mr. Lippman. He was prematurely advancing fees from estates he oversaw and taking money he had not earned, according to the commission. Judge Holzman testified that Mr. Lippman worked for the public administrator, and it was her responsibility, not his, to make sure Mr. Lippman was getting proper fees.

But the commission has argued that as the person authorized to hire and fire the Surrogate’s Court staff, Judge Holzman, by law, was responsible for making sure that the court’s employees followed proper procedure. The commission has also criticized Judge Holzman for his response after learning of Mr. Lippman’s reputed practices. Judge Holzman did not alert the authorities, and instead of firing Mr. Lippman, let him work on other estates to pay down the improper fees he had drawn on prior cases.

Mr. Lippman has been indicted in the Bronx on charges including scheming to defraud and grand larceny for his actions in the Surrogate’s Court.

A version of this article appears in print on January 11, 2012, on Page A24 of the New York edition with the headline: Bronx Surrogate Judge, Facing Discipline, Defends Himself. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe